A Place to Find Cool & Colorful Zoanthids!

It’s not often we find great yellow zoas in the hobby that are valued by collectors but one of the more recent zoas that popped up in the hobby has certainly caught many collectors’ attention.

Sunny Delight is a multi-colored zoa and it certainly is a ray of sunshine in a sea of colorful zoas. After getting through the purple stuff on the edge, you get to the yellow plate and the neon green core. My favorite is probably the light blue mouth on top of all the other complementary colors.

This zoa is currently highly sought after. If you have some for sale, please let us know and we can highlight your store on the right. If you have some to trade, please feel free to post your availability in the comments below.

Rare Zoanthids feature some of the most colorful and desirable zoas that are collected in the hobby today. But what are the most popular zoas that people search for? Below are top three zoas that people search for on this website.

3. Candy Apple Reds

With amazing colors on both the zoanthus plate and skirt, it’s no wonder that Candy Apple Reds are some of the most desired zoas in the hobby. We’ve gathered a lot of attention on this site for featuring this zoa so chances are if you have some in your collection, you can get some great trades for it! Have you seen other rainbow zoas as bright as these?

2. Purple Deaths

The majestic Purple Deaths paly gets a lot of attention in this hobby due to its color and its size. These paly’s certainly seem like they are large enough to swallow up whole critters. If you have these in your collection, we would love to hear how you are taking care of them. What conditions have you found to be ideal for these?

1. Purple Hornets

Deep colors zoas are a favorite amongst zoa collectors. Combine deep colors with bright florescent markings, you have a collectors item! Purple Hornets, the darker cousin of the Blue Hornets is now one of the hobby’s most sought out zoas – even more than the Purple People Eaters! If you have these, please share them with the community so they can be more widely distributed and preserved.

While chatting with the Atlanta Reef Club members, I stumbled across a picture of these zoas.

While yellow polyps grow like weeds under the right conditions, yellow zoas have always facinated me cause not too many people collect them. Often times they are a morph of green zoas under extreme lighting conditions but once the zoas come home, not too many stay yellow.

While the above zoas do not have a black center plate with yellow skirt, they do look amazing. I would almost argue that these look like lions due to their yellow body and tan mane. (But I didn’t name these zoas.) A frag of these would certainly look amazing next to some purple and blue zoanthids. Anyone have any to trade?

Similar to the purple hornet zoanthids, the blue hornet is another zoa with very distinctive patterns and vivid colors. While the purple hornet sports a purple mouth and purple plate, the blue hornet sports a blue plate with a purple mouth.

These corals were originally found off of the African coast and thus have been harder to collect than corals found on other coasts. While these zoas also look similar to the Blue Eyed Dragon, it does share more similarities with the Purple Hornet by having the same color ring and skirt.

If you’re looking to get some of these, make sure you keep them in low, indirect lighting. Also, if you are buying from a private party, check and see how long the seller has had the colony. Word on the street is these zoas are fickle and emo.

Coral Fragging – the breaking of a coral colony into smaller fragments, is a natural occurrence in ocean reefs. In fact, it’s one of the ways that corals migrate and reproduce out in the wild. In nature, a number of things can split a coral: fish hunting for food, clumsy fish bumping into corals, strong currents, decorator crabs, falling objects, etc. When you think about it, it’s actually a bit silly that we turn what is a brutal natural occurrence into such a delicate surgery at home.

However, as our appreciate for the sea grows and our wallet shrinks, fragging and trading corals is one of the best ways to expand your personal collection, meet local enthusiasts and save some money in the process.

If you are thinking about joining the trade yourself, below are some supplies you will need to pick up to start the process.

Protective Gear – Goggles and latex gloves are highly recommended if you’re new to coral fragging. Some of the stuff you’re cutting up can be very toxic and you would not want to have a zoa accidentally squirt into your eye or mouth.

Exacto Knife – Similar to performing open heart surgery, these precision cutters are the perfect tools for cutting LPS and zoanthids. If you’re looking to trade soft corals, make sure you pick one of these up along with a few spare blades. Working with saltwater items tend to rust out the blades sooner than you think.

Snips / Cutters – If you’re looking to trade SPS (hard, bony) corals, then having a heavier cutting tool will allow you to break off the SPS fingers more precisely than say… breaking the coral by hand.

Superglue Gel – Most of the glues sold in the hobby are just variations of the generic superglue gels you can find in your local drug store. Why pay $15 a bottle when you can pick one up for $2.50? I recommend getting the gel over the regular liquid superglue cause you never know how the two surfaces will line up – especially under water.

rubble rocks are just smaller rocks

Rubble Rock – If you’re looking to frag corals, rubble rock, or small pieces of live rock/dry rock can be a great place to attach your new frag. It also makes the reattachment process a lot easier when you can pull out a small piece of rock to work with while you’re fragging.

Sand Plugs / Ceramic Plugs – If you like the unified look or would like to go PRO with your fragging operation, I recommend you check out the compressed sand plugs by Boston Aqua Farms. I am personally a bigger fan of the compressed aragonite plugs over ceramic ones because when you’re ready to attach the frags permanently to your display, it’s much easier to snip off the unwanted parts of the sand plug than ceramic or plastic plugs. Plus aragonite is a natural ingredient of the reef.

Egg Crate – If you are using sand plugs, then you will want to head down to your local Home Depot or hardware store’s lighting department and pick up an egg crate to keep the plugs upright. These egg crates can be easily cut into smaller pieces using the snips tool and if small enough, you can even super glue them to a magnetic aquarium glass cleaner to create a shelf for your new frags.

Styrofoam Tray – Depending on where you’re cutting your frags, you probably do not want globs of glue or toxic coral matter on your table that is normally used for other things. If you’ve bought fish or corals online, you can use the insulated box-top as your tray, otherwise, I recommend picking up a styrofoam piece to protect your workstation.

Tupperware / Saltwater – When working with frags and glue, you should always have some saltwater in a tupperware nearby. The reason being the glue cures a lot faster underwater so once you cut and set the frags, it’s recommended you give them a quick dip to finish the job.

For the serious frag trader...

Frag Tank – Now, if you’re REALLY serious about trading or selling frags, you can also get a separate aquarium for just your frags. Frag tanks are basically smaller, shallower tanks that allow for more lighting to promote the growth of frags. Keep in mind that once you’re at this stage of the game, you will try to justify its purchase as an investment to help earn some money back from the hobby through sales or trades… but what it really means is that you’ve just cross the line from hobbyist to addict. =)

Now that you have all the pieces in play, make sure you check out my next post in the series: the fragging.